Social Media Campaign Review: Nickelodeon’s ‘The Big Help’ Campaign Encourages Children To Build A Greener Environment

Nickelodeon’s ‘The Big Help’ is back for its fifth year in India. The idea behind this initiative is to empower children with the knowledge that they can make a difference to the planet.

Objectives

This international campaign is an endeavour aiming to encourage children to come forward and take steps towards a greener environment. A digital campaign to reach out to kids who spend a lot of time online has been introduced to target these kids on social media platforms.

Implementation

To participate, one can log on to and take the BIG HELP PLEDGE for a greener environment. The pledge will reflect on your profile and you can encourage your friends to come forward and participate in the movement. Spread out over a month, the initiative came to an end on Earth Hour on March 29th, and the city with the most number of kids taking the pledge will be announced as ‘India’s Greenest City’.

Positives

Nickelodeon’s popular toons like Ninja, MotuPatlu, Dora have popped up on the campaign’s Facebook page to share some of their favourite ‘green tips’. This has helped keep fans engaged and interested throughout the duration of the campaign.

The ‘Green Facts’ tab on the Big Help page has been giving users fascinating and relatively obscure facts about trees and the environment, thereby giving the campaign an educational twist.

Choosing Facebook as a platform to promote the campaign has helped widen its reach. Making it a city wise contest is a smart move from the point of view of nurturing and building native pride.

Once you take the pledge, it reflects on your profile page thereby encouraging others to participate without you having to even ask them to take part. Their Twitter profile has a number of tweets with #TheBigHelp, keeping the buzz alive on the poplar micro blogging platform.

Scope for Improvement

One thing that really stands out is the fact that the campaign could have done with an offline edge. Tying up with schools or events at parks and malls would have definitely increased participation and interest.

The campaign lacks creativity and I'm not sure how many kids would be interested in participating in something that does not offer a prize, coupons, something as motivation. To wrap this up, Nickelodeon’s The Big Help Campaign is meant to inspire kids by positioning them as change makers for the environment. The overall theme is good but something that will definitely add value is acting to save the environment. Without action, everything else would fall short.